


Transcendentalism

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Gore, M/M, Rough Sex, Word Porn, dark!Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 13:32:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1820197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Hannibal's tongue appears to part his lips before he releases his hold and looks back to the body at their feet.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>"Come," Hannibal says, drawing the backs of his fingers against Will's cheek before he turns towards the car again. "Your catch must be cleaned before you can enjoy what more it has to offer."</i>
</p>
<p>Written for the <a href="http://murderhusbandsnetwork.tumblr.com/">murderhusbandsnetwork</a> Amuse Bouche challenge of "Nature". Based very loosely on Emerson's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_%28essay%29">essay on nature</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transcendentalism

**Author's Note:**

> We're sorry Mr. Emerson sir.

_Nature is divided into four usages; Commodity, Beauty, Language and Discipline. These distinctions define the ways by which humans use nature for their basic needs, their desire for delight, their communication with one another and their understanding of the world._

~

_**I. Commodity (basic needs)** _

“I need you.”

The call had come late enough at night that Hannibal had to dress himself again before leaving. He hadn’t asked more than an address before hanging up, given an intersection instead. The calm in Will’s voice was unsteady at best, a sea before a storm, darkening with each ebb and flow of breath that Hannibal could hear wash against the phone.

Hannibal decides against dressing into a full suit in favor of arriving sooner, drawing his coat tighter against the chill autumn air as he closes the car door behind him with only a quiet click. A rustle of wind stirs bits of trash across the uneven sidewalk, a desolate area of Baltimore inhabited by industrial buildings and warehouses.

He sees Will, there, between buildings in the long wool coat he’s taken to wearing and feels a warm pull to watch him darkly illuminated in the sulfurous lights. If Jack the Ripper had been so becoming, he needn’t have paid for the company of his victims, Hannibal considers, approaching him unhurried. The scent of blood hangs like the promise of rain on the wind and Hannibal allows a small sound, a curious noise.

“You rang.”

Will doesn’t look up, but his lips part on another slow exhale. It’s not yet cold enough for his breath to steam. When he presses his lips together they’re tilted in the perfect mockery of a smile.

“I wish I’d asked you to bring cigarettes.” he comments blandly, finally looking up. His hands sit deep in his pockets. He doesn’t remove them to gesture. Instead, his tongue parts his lips and runs across his teeth. It’s a strangely languid gesture. Predatory.

“Perhaps I should have kept our therapy hours available for what they were,” he murmurs, taking in a breath in a sniff. “Surely someone who succumbs finally to bloodlust when their anger can no longer be directed at their initial subject, needs… therapy.”

“It may be time for more sophisticated therapies,” Hannibal agrees. “Previous methods may be insufficient for your particular progression.”

Hannibal’s attention drifts enough to study him, a quick glance to see that there’s no blood dripping from him, no evidence being laid in his steps. His eyes lift to Will’s just a moment later, searching his features now, for evidence of guilt instead, an attention prying and persistent as it crawls over Will, and then finally relents.

He finds no evidence of that, either.

Fine lines gather in the corners of his eyes. “Show me.”

Will’s eyes narrow, barely, and it’s such a mirror to Hannibal’s expression it makes the older man pause. Then Will turns on his heel, leading the way further down the alley. It’s almost tacky, the entire setting, behind a dumpster in the middle of a bad street, late at night. It’s something that would end up on the last page of a trashy newspaper scraping by to make ends meet, not the front page of the national news.

Laughably, not Tattlecime.

The body doesn’t look at all damaged when they get to it, just a small man curled on his side as though in sleep. Not homeless, but far from wealthy. Hannibal watches as Will regards the body with nothing more than a passing glance before he directs his eyes to Hannibal.

“I cannot abide cruelty.” he says softly, but the sharpness of his words strikes something in Hannibal that reminds him of his own distaste for rudeness, the way it blooms ugly and reeking unless stopped. He doesn’t ask what the man did.

Will licks his lips and bites the bottom one gently, eyes back down to the body again before he steps closer to kneel, finally bring a hand up to turn him. Hannibal notes they’re dark with dirt or blood or both.

“He insisted on taking his carnal pleasure, on forcing sight and memory on his victims. He never killed them, he left them empty, with nothing but his face lingering in the shadows of their nightmares and his touch in the bruises on their skin.” Will stands again, flexes his fingers absently.

“So I taught him death. Let him taste cruelty and mercy both.”

The man’s eyes are missing, the lids peeled back. No sharp object was used. The bottom lids of Will’s eyes flicker just barely as he continues to move his hand, cold fingers shifting, sifting through the air.

“Are you going to ask me how I feel?” Will’s voice is just above a whisper. They are far from these kinds of conversations, stilted civility long forgotten in their interaction now, in the harsh and soft pleasure they take from each other, share with the other. Words and actions both, feelings set aside for early mornings only.

“An act of justice, then, against one who may have never met it otherwise,” Hannibal concedes. “An act of mercy granted to those would have suffered for it.”

The blood is drying brown on Will’s hands and Hannibal notes to wash them for him later, to show Will precisely how to remove the stains from beneath his fingernails. He’s charmed, for want of a better word, by the crude elegance of the scene before him. Amber lights and whistling wind and blood clotting against the ground in the dim alley. There’s an artistry to it, in its own fashion, reminiscent of that unpracticed bravery he sees emergent in Will. His insistence on using his bare hands, to remove even the barrier of latex gloves from engaging so entirely in his acts. The cool disdain in his words, of an act deemed righteous to satisfy a need in the world left untended.

As when music shifts from a minor chord to a major, Hannibal draws a breath, barely audible.

“Would you like to tell me how you feel?” Hannibal responds.

He crouches beside Will, as though at his feet, to examine without contact the work laid before him. There is swelling of tissue in the empty sockets, a response of the body prior to death - a punishment, then. Considerate. Thoughtful. Lower still Hannibal notes the dark bruises pressed beneath the man’s chin as his head lolls under its own weight, neck misshapen, flattened across the anterior.

Rather than simply constricting the flow of blood - it would create a euphoria, briefly, in the brain’s last response before expiration - the larynx and the trachea were crushed beneath the weight of Will’s grip, for his victim to choke and perish slowly as the control of his own body was taken from him.

“Beautiful,” murmurs Hannibal.

Will swallows, allows the assessment of his work but says nothing for the moment. He considers how he feels, wonders if it’s worth telling Hannibal something the man can read off of him. Off his body language. Later, off his body.

He hums softly.

“Justice is meaningless unless delivered by a victim,” he says, “Mercy must be taken upon themselves to feel it, to understand its balm. Otherwise it is another word, meaningless, vestigial, for a feeling never felt.”

He licks his lips, directs his eyes from the man on the ground, for a moment away from Hannibal as he feels the other turn, more than hears him. He moves like a predator, Will has learned to rely on all senses but sight to understand Hannibal.

In sight he indulges.

“You are a hunter, Hannibal,” he reminds him, “You track.”

He shrugs his shoulders, pulls his other hand from his pocket - similarly marred in blood - flexes that too before grasping his opposite wrist as though it pained him, turning it slowly in the circle of his fingers.

“I lure.”

The movement is observed without a need for Hannibal to turn his head further. Indeed, he does not, as Will’s words settle against him.

They’re as deliberate as the order of violence granted to the man beneath them on the ground, each syllable and action chosen with intention and weight. Hannibal would expect no less of him, but the implications still linger uneasy and Hannibal finds that he’s unable to quickly assign them to their proper place and stow them.

He allows the sensation with a bare pull of tension across his mouth, concealed as he ducks his head to stand.

“To lure requires bait,” Hannibal states, deferring only superficially, “as you’ve explained to me.”

Broad hands smooth the front of his coat. “What bait did you choose for this particular catch?”

Will lets his wrist go. Sets his shoulders. The smile that slides to his face is not his own, as though a pendulum swung to set it there.

“Demure,” he lists, “He was a man who could restrain but not drag, he had to charm his way with a victim.” Will laughs, a quiet thing, “And he was charming.”

His hands return to his pockets and he sets the toe of his shoe against the sole of those the man wears, a strangely dominant gesture. His chin lifts.

“Dark hair,” he continues, “Blue eyes. Young. Or with the demeanor to suggest such.”

The smile fades, his eyes return to their normal color, the anger behind them palpable.

“I used the best lure at my disposal. Controllable. Pliant. Bespoke, like a good suit.” he clicks the sound.

“In the end, though, it seems I took more thorough pleasure from him than he could from me.”

Hannibal observes as Will pockets his hands again. Thinks of the spread of blood and grime into the fine fabric. Thinks of the spread of other hands against those same hips, just as dirty, grasping.

Something blooms in Hannibal, fragrant and serene as a moonflower unfurling in the cover of darkness and begging to be plucked.

He nurtures it, indulgent, caresses it with a touch that instead finds its way to Will's hair. Strong fingers vine their way into his curls and squeeze, just gently, not enough to disrupt the blossom that's ensnared itself in his chest.

"A lesson well learned, then, that not all bait is without a hook."

Hannibal's tongue appears to part his lips before he releases his hold and looks back to the body at their feet.

"Come," Hannibal says, drawing the backs of his fingers against Will's cheek before he turns towards the car again. "Your catch must be cleaned before you can enjoy what more it has to offer."

 

_**II. Beauty (need for delight)** _

“Is there anything worth saving in a man so rotten?” Will muses, running his hand just above the chest of the dead man on the table. This is nothing like his response to Randall Tier - also his, also poisoned in his human form, wrong - there is no fear here, and the revulsion is for the man’s actions, not his own.

“There is no beauty in it. No honor.” No guilt.

Will looks up, takes his hand away, not touching the man again.

“I wouldn’t stain your kitchen with bad meat.”

“‘Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art,’” Hannibal recites. “Emerson.”

He offers Will the scalpel, flashing bright beneath the halogen lights, and mirrors his movement down the torso with a flourish of his hand. “Just there.”

“We will create beauty where there was none,” Hannibal continues, watching Will rather than the press of the blade against yielding skin. “Art from artlessness. While one might argue he was not without taste,” a pause, scarcely a breath, “he would readily have destroyed beauty to indulge it. Taken the parts most desired and left the rest to waste away.”

Hannibal reaches out, hand clasping gently over Will’s to steady the scarlet line he draws down the man’s sternum to his stomach. Will offers the scalpel back, a bare sigh passing his lips, and Hannibal pushes in steady, small gestures to remove the skin from the ribs, fingers sliding beneath it in inches to pry it free.

“There is a certain poetry to be found in offering him the same consideration he would have offered you.”

“Is there nothing you see ugliness in?” Will asks him softly, turns his head to look properly, to see. This man he has seen, often, has regarded and committed quite literally to heart.

He doesn’t blanch, here, at the blood, at the way the skin comes apart like wrapping paper, the organs and bones beneath for them to choose and take and enjoy at will.

“Is that why you do it?” he adds after a moment, tone lower, not accusatory, curious. “Create beauty from the ugliness you see, a godly form of natural selection?”

Will laughs, and the sound is, oddly, genuinely pleased. He runs dirty hands through his hair and lets out a long pleased noise with his breath.

“How did you see through my rudeness?” He asks, astonished, “How did I not end up on your table, and simply in your mouth for pleasure?”

“Have you not?” Hannibal asks, feigning innocence. He hums a thoughtful noise, as though surprised by this revelation, and a slight smile catches him. Pushing harder now against the more difficult tissues until they fall free and bone glistens bright before them. 

“I find a great deal of pleasure in cultivation,” he answers, making his way around the table. He murmurs a quiet apology before setting the bone saw to ribs that split quickly beneath it, cage unhinged and pulled free after a few minutes’ work. It’s set aside with disinterest, attention drawn back to Will.

“Cultivation of existing growth, by removing the weeds that would seek to smother it out. Cultivation of new growth into unexpected beauty,” continues Hannibal.

Another smile, unseen, as he stands behind Will who does not move away from the organs laid before them shining scarlet, who does not turn to face him but rather lets Hannibal move near. He removes his gloves and sets them aside, to curl his hand against Will’s neck and draw it upwards, to catch a curl of hair and tuck it behind his ear. His voice presses low against the curve of Will’s neck where he kisses, to taste the sweat and dirt and blood and adrenaline and desire, the latter coiling sinuous through the rest.

“There are times when what may appear to be a nuisance simply has not been given all that it needs to flourish.”

Will hums, tilts his head to allow Hannibal better access to his neck, laying prone for a predator and welcoming him close.

“Once in a while the right tools are withheld,” he adds, smile curving just the corners of his mouth into a very pleased expression that he knows Hannibal can feel translated with the tug and pull of muscles in his throat.

“You have an electric bone saw?”

It seems like such a gentle question, innocent, without any implication, and yet laughter and pleasure hangs beneath them before Will turns, regards Hannibal as he stands, and brings up a hand to brush his cheek, leaving a smudge there.

“Perhaps beauty comes through from struggle,” Will adds, voice a little rougher, “The nature of anything alive is to struggle to live. Anything with the potential for beauty must struggle to fulfill it.”

Hannibal presses his forehead against Will’s, arm sliding around him as Hannibal leans over him enough to bend him gently back. He brings their mouths together but does not kiss him yet, lets Will’s warm energy, this dawning enthusiasm linger between them unconsummated for a moment more.

“And in those rare circumstances when the struggle is understood and overcome,” Hannibal whispers, pulse shivering like leaves moved dry by the wind of Will’s words against him, “therein lies the potential for transcendence. To exist above the fight and see only the potential for beauty inherent in all things.”

He leans in again to catch Will’s smile against his mouth, pressing into him and extending a hand to stop him from spilling into the table. Hannibal braces against the cold metal and pulls Will tighter with his other arm, drinking in the joy of him, the sheer splendor of the breathless laugh that parts their lips.

“All things,” Hannibal repeats, amused. "Even those that are terribly rude when it comes to clearing away their dishes after dinner.”

Will’s tongue caresses his teeth, a gentle stroking motion that has Hannibal’s eyes honing in on it, hungry. Then Will stops.

"You distract me after dinner." Will reminds him quietly, blue eyes unmoved, clear, staring into Hannibal’s own. The entire situation should make his skin crawl, being so close to death, being the cause of it, and feeling nothing.

What people forget about the nature of empathy is it cannot be turned inwards, Will cannot see himself, in that lies his weakness.

Instead he has honed it to strength, his very own portrait, like Dorian Gray. The sins reflected and at once absorbed from his skin. The thought brings heat pooling in his belly, brings his hands up to draw messy fingers through Hannibal’s hair.

"Seems only fair I distract you when you make it." He leans in, "and yet," lips brushing, barely touching, "perhaps you should further cultivate your patience."

Hannibal’s smile broadens and his arm pulls firmer around Will, eyes open just enough to watch Will so near to him. “Unable to abide cruelty,” he says, gently amused, “but entirely comfortable providing it.”

Though the rich smell of decay surrounds them, it is the growth that is illuminated by its presence so near. Will’s abundant comfort as he breathes a small sound beneath Hannibal’s demanding mouth and the table squeaks beneath Hannibal’s hand. The way that Will’s heart races against Hannibal’s chest, tempo raised not by guilt or gore or anything so tedious but by the beauty that blossoms between their mouths.

Hannibal sighs between them and, bemused, watches the darkness of Will’s eyes, even as coy light filters across the coronas of blue. Will remains ardent, pleased, as he leans back against the table.

“This, then, will be my struggle to transcend,” muses Hannibal, and he reaches for another pair of gloves.

 

_**III. Language (need to communicate)** _

Communication is a respect, it is a way to bridge any void. Will had once made the effort to learn a language that would grant him access to an entire community that were notorious for mistrust. Words upon words upon words.

Then the words had grown tedious, had become a game, in a way, to once again push apart a canyon between himself and anyone wishing to bridge it. He used his words as a weapon as he had once used it as a tool.

But words are not what he needs for this understanding. He understands Hannibal as one twin understands another; with implicit communication, without garishly worded phrases. He understands him through the movement of his hands, through the way he turns his eyes just so to something he finds pleasing, the way they narrow when he does not. Will reads Hannibal like braille, with gentle fingers and repetition.

He opens himself and lets himself be read just as clearly.

As Hannibal works, Will watches. He lets him handle the delicate organs and absorbs the knowledge, the softness, the care Hannibal gives to create beauty from the slaughter, from the horror.

Surgeon. Chef. Murderer. Connoisseur. Butcher. Cannibal. All terms that apply but each insufficient on its own, each only a portion of the entire corpus.

There is a conservation of energy in the way Hannibal moves. A grace honed and practiced to bear no unnecessary actions, but only those strictly necessary to execute their intended task. He turns the knife to a particular angle and with a smooth jerk of his wrist frees the lungs from the trachea that once brought air to them, until Will brought that to a lingering and painful end.

Love of life and death in turn, expressed through the tenderness of Hannibal's gestures.

Hannibal asks a question, waits enough to catch Will's attention, and amusement tilts the corners of his eyes.

Folding his arms against the table, Will rests his chin on them, and it takes a moment for him to realize with what he’s sharing the table and lean back again. Hannibal notes the comfort with which he leans in and away, unhurried, unstartled by the proximity to the death he created, and he breathes softly before continuing.

Will hears Hannibal, listens passively to the way his accent moves and turns the words to suit him. Hears him speak about about the correct color and consistency of lung tissue (pink, not grey and firm, not spongy). How much a kidney should weigh (approximately as much as a grapefruit). The most efficient way to examine a liver for overall health and why the stomach is best avoided...

Words, words, words. Will watches Hannibal’s hands instead. Even bound in blue latex they are elegant in their gestures, precise in separating what is wanted from what is not, and the ease of his ability says more than the language might.

Each organ that’s desired is laid to one side, each one that is not is discarded onto the table for disposition. Like taking apart a boat motor to find what went wrong and fix it, but instead to find what parts weren’t broken and remove them.

Opposites.

Mirrors.

Reflecting each other exactly and at once exact opposites. The right becomes the left, for the other, saving lives and taking them, putting something together and pulling it apart. Good, evil. Guilty, innocent.

Will shakes his head, a gentle gesture. No, not those.

Too many factors, right and wrong, rhyme and reason, rinse repeat.

He stands, walks around the table to where Hannibal is working and sets his forehead between his shoulders as they shift in the gentle motions of undoing, of creating beauty from death.

Communication. Understanding.

A need for closeness portrayed by nothing but the taking of it, the covering of space, the warmth between two bodies that will grow warmer if Will takes another step and slips in behind Hannibal. He resists, for now, turns instead to press his lips where his forehead had been, a hotter point, another message.

Hannibal straightens in receipt of the message, the resettling of a few vertebrae that draw him a little taller. Unresistant to whatever Will would share with him, yielding to the missive reiterated with another kiss. Longer, this time, lingering enough that Hannibal can feel Will's breath against him.

Smooth movements with a sharp blade, to free muscle from its host. Effortless in butchery, a conveyance of ease - a suggestion that in time, Will too will be so capable as this. Reactions withheld from a thick clotted drip of blood across his arm, but a response to Will instead when Hannibal feels the expression of Will's fingers against the small of his back.

A quiet hum, that wordless says much.

They follow the movement of Hannibal's muscles as he follows those unmoving beneath his own hand. Will glides his palm across Hannibal's shoulder and down his arm again, to splay pliant against the skin revealed beneath folded sleeves. Tandem movements, as Hannibal refines the expression of Will's need.

It’s a dance, a synchronized movement of two bodies in orbit, as Will’s hands move over Hannibal’s, fingers sliding over the blood-wet gloves to press between his knuckles, to keep the motion Hannibal performs so effortlessly, carefully, to feel it translate to himself as he steps up to press to Hannibal hips to shoulders.

And then he moves, again, brings his hands up Hannibal’s arms, over his impeccable sleeves, watching the red spread over the fabric he can’t fathom the price of. He brings the carnage, the grit, the humanity of it all back to the man who takes that away, who hides from it and keeps his hands clean.

Will’s hands skim over Hannibal’s neck, up just under his chin, tilt his head back. And Hannibal allows it, bends as Will wants him, doesn’t still his hands, to keep them merged and moving with how Will is moving. A blend of communication.

Hannibal breathes. Drawn in and released with slow practice but communicating enough merely by the necessity of this regulation. He keeps his eyes turned down, to ensure nothing of value is lost even as his attention shifts instead to the gently demanding press of Will's hand against his throat, just beneath his jaw.

_**IV. Discipline (understanding of the world)** _

Will's touch lingers there, bending Hannibal's form and attention to suit Will's sudden whimsy. His fingers work roughly to pull loose the buttons of Hannibal's shirt, thick clots of blood blooming in pale pinks and severe scarlet over the expensive fabric.

White, as ever, Hannibal's expression of his own control over the chaos of dismemberment. He sighs a note of quiet dismay as this pleasure - to butcher without letting it reach past his table - is taken from him by hurried hands.

He doesn't need to turn to see Will's pleasure at the sound, and Hannibal separates the heart from its moorings with a firmer twist of the blade than strictly necessary.

"Will," he intones, a soft-spoken warning as his profiler's clever hands - as deliberate in their gestures as Hannibal's own - slide across his stomach and lower still.

"Will you continue to cultivate your patience?" Will murmurs, hot, soft words to his neck, his fingers splay over the V of Hannibal’s hips, turn inwards.

He knows the preparation is nearly complete - Hannibal rarely uses bones in his cooking, and the rest is no longer salvageable. He had listened, to every word of Hannibal’s explanation about the stomach, the bacteria within.

He won't hold a body so long next time, he won't stand across from it in an alley and gasp to catch his breath as he tries to memorize his bruises, tries to erase them by will alone.

Next time Hannibal will come home to this, near-undone, prepared meat so they can make dinner together.

He hooks his thumbs under the waistband and presses closer to Hannibal’s back, rolling his hips.

"Do you know how I felt?" He whispers, lips hot against Hannibal’s skin, "Under his weight? Struggling, pretending I was helpless to his whims, to his desires when I was anything but?"

His voice tilts, gently, to a soft moan.

"I felt free, Hannibal, I felt powerful."

Hannibal draws a breath, imagines he smells blossoms on the night air, and the breath leaves him shorter than it was drawn as Will’s words cling like vines tight across his chest.

“You are both,” Hannibal murmurs in agreement. He holds the man’s heart aloft in his hand, silent for a moment but for the soft spatters of thickening blood falling into the emptied chest cavity. Considering it at length, imagining how it would have pumped faster with Will pressed against it, funneling blood to the eyes that looked upon him and the mouth that pressed to him and the hands that grasped him and other parts beyond.

With a note of disdain, he discards it.

“To restrain yourself in such a way,” Hannibal states gently, “to let yourself be seen as he wished to see you, rather than as you truly are - this is a skill like no other. Eminently useful, in all that we do.” The blood-blackened gloves are pried free and Hannibal wraps his hands around Will’s wrists, thumb stroking soft against the sore one that Will has turned wincing all evening.

He turns slowly towards Will, a restrained effort from how quickly he would prefer to move and snare him by the hair and remind him with hard hands and soft kisses who has shown him that power, who has made it manifest. He instead tries to dislodge Will as little as possible, to hold himself disciplined and let Will explore. For now.

“And now that you have discovered this,” Hannibal suggests, “the question begs as to what you’ll do with it.”

Will smiles, and it’s a slow, warm thing, like melting butter. His hands slide over Hannibal’s back now, smearing the rest of the mess over the unmarred fabric there, digging his fingers into his shoulders and tilting his head up. Hannibal is just the right amount taller, just enough to tilt his head, enough to duck it and fit beneath Hannibal’s chin.

He pushes himself up, enough to bring his lips to Hannibal’s ear, breath tickling against skin.

“Cultivate it.” he breathes, consonants precise and clipped, lips stretched wider in a grin before the tip of his tongue finds Hannibal’s skin and draws a warm, barely-felt line.

Hannibal’s eyes close, head lifted by the probing pressure of Will’s beneath it, and he draws a deep breath through his nose as Will’s words settle into his skin, the same sensation as his tongue. Temptation, as far from innocence as Will would play at feigning.

He sighs.

Rough fingers snare in Will’s hair, pulling the dirty curls straight against his palm as he tugs Will’s head back enough to bare his neck, to watch the way his pulse beats beneath his pale skin. Steady, hardly stirred even from the sudden jolt of movement.

“Show me.”

Will’s lips are parted, dark, and his eyes search Hannibal’s in a quick back and forth flicker, before he blinks, the expression morphing to something softer, something approachable and charming. Gentle. Hannibal watches the pulse quicken, feels the way Will’s hands tighten against his shoulders as though to push him away. 

The transformation is flawless, quick, and utterly convincing.

The perfect lure.

And then Will moans, a soft, pleased thing, and swallows, his throat working beneath pale skin where it’s held vulnerable.

“Please?” he asks.

Hannibal watches rapt as Will’s lips unfurl to form the word, press together to form the percussive and let it fall with a whisper. Not a plea, but a promise. The carefully lifted pulse is all but audible under Hannibal’s attention to this transformation, the push of his hands pulled back in desire and resistance mingling in a mixed message precisely performed.

Extraordinary, Hannibal thinks as he grants Will a considering note, something nearing approval that only alludes to how truly charmed he is, well beyond even the lovely edifice that Will erects for him.

An absolute control, wielded with skill and enthusiasm both. A prodigy discovering their calling.

Hannibal’s mouth is rough, brutal against Will’s with a cruel desire resisted for far too long that night. He pulls his hair back again to lean low over him, driving forward until Will’s back meets the basement wall hard enough to nearly knock the wind from him.

There is no elegance, now, no disciplined movements perfectly performed. Hannibal’s hand presses against the front of Will’s pants, drawing harshly upward until he can pull free the fastenings and feel him, skin to skin, instead.

“Please what?” Hannibal breathes, as unresistant to the desires Will stirs in him as Will would have him be.

Another moan, another soft noise of pleasure, and Will presses up into the hold, delighted at being able to pull apart the frayed strings of Hannibal’s control and manipulate them into a new pattern.

“Hold me,” he gasps, tangles one hand in Hannibal’s hair and holds on, hips pushing up into his hand.

“Bend me,” he knows he’s smearing blood over him, knows that later they will stand under the hot spray of the shower upstairs, close enough for it to rinse them both at once, and Hannibal will map the bruises on Will’s chest with soft fingers and murmur French in his hair.

“Fuck me,” his breath hitches.

Is it the nature of something to evolve and become its true potential? Is it the nature of something to be guided there and allowed to breathe and unfurl on its own? Is it his nature to be Hannibal’s foil, his mirror or to transcend, to become more?

A bond, two natures and one heart beat between them?

Seeking to join with the other, in the way they know themselves to be and can only mirror in their actions.

Hannibal shoves Will’s pants to bridge across his thighs. A kiss passes between them, gentle, a reminder of what they share in quieter moments and what Hannibal will lavish adoring on him when the evening is at an end.

It has scarcely parted before he turns Will against the wall, grasping his shoulder to hold him pressed against it, to see the flicker of delight in his eyes as Will turns to watch over his shoulder as Hannibal tugs free the zipper of his pants.

Spit, a rough sound, uncouth counterpoint to the sweet gentility that Will lavished on him moments before, and Hannibal prepares himself only brusquely before pressing against Will. Hard breaths, short, against Will’s neck as he ducks his head lower to shove their bodies together.

“Again,” Hannibal insists, a harsh whisper, his free hand stroking soft through Will’s curls, gathering them between his fingers.

Will gasps, arches back, hands against the wall.

One nature unfurling another, unwinding, turning, twisting, pushing another thread between, insinuating, tightening, connected.

Understanding.

“Fuck me,” he repeats, breathless. Around them, the smell of blood, the smell of dirt and the body of a man who had tried this and found himself destroyed for his trouble. Unworthy. Rejected. Repulsive.

Hannibal’s attention snares on Will’s fingers, curling against the wall beneath the steady of press of Hannibal inside of him. Gore and grime, wrist-high and stark against his skin, and as has begun to occur with an almost worrying frequency, Hannibal feels himself gentle, just so, from the dire games between them.

Yielding his control to Will as readily as Will yields discipline to him.

His hand loosens from where he has Will pinned to the wall, to wrap instead around his stomach and pull him close. To let him feel the way he stirs Hannibal’s heart to racing, to feel the way Hannibal allows it to do so for Will and Will alone.

“Beautiful.” Breathless in his rough whisper against Will’s ear, tilted into his hair and nuzzled against his skin.

Will’s breathing stutters, eyes closed and chin tilted up as he arches up against the wall and lets the soft caresses overtake him. Lets the only man he would do this for claim him again.

It’s slow, deep, hard enough to drive him against the cool wall and back against Hannibal both, and Will lets his voice loose, lets the tone tilt to innocence, to wanton desperate pleasure. Surrenders, succumbs.

Basic needs, delight, communication… everything twined so hard together Will can scarcely breathe and he shivers, brings his hand down to stroke himself, presses Hannibal’s name like a prayer against the cold wall, breath fogging it and fading again and again.

He feels his pleasure build, coil, tug at him.

“Please.”

Hannibal lifts his hand to frame Will’s face, firmly grasped, thumb stroking along his cheek, across the curve of Will’s lips. To feel the energy of his breath, his words, his life exuberant and raw, cultivated from damage that would have destroyed anyone less deserving of the transcendence earned through struggle.

He grasps Will in his hand, sliding down the length of him to push his own fingers aside, and stroke in time with the movement of his own hips. Wrist turning over, slowing his own desire to match the one at which Will moves.

Slowly, deeply, and irreversibly forward.

The sound of Will’s breath ripped from between his lips, release unspooling hot over Hannibal’s hand, is enough for Hannibal to drive him nearly flat against the wall in one slow push, equally breathless, equally relieved as a single sharp shudder spirals down his spine.

Silence falls between them, quiet but for the shaking sighs they struggle to contain and the soft spatter of blood against the floor.

Will pants, lips parted on a grin, one hand by his face as he turns into it, sated, hot, exhausted.

“Adapt,” he gasps, licks his bottom lip into his mouth, “Evolve.”

He groans when Hannibal pulls away, out, strokes his back and turns Will to kiss him, mouth hungry, demanding, possessive and protective at once. Will smiles into it, brings up one hand to cup Hannibal’s face, his other turns, shifts, the wrist he had nursed earlier.

“Become.” he breathes, pulling back from Hannibal, stopping him from following with the thin blade pressed to his throat, pulled from his sleeve, just enough to feel, placed just so to do enough damage with the least amount of strength.

He grins, watches Hannibal’s eyes brighten, just seeing him, experiencing.

Understanding.

Will leans in, again, to kiss him.

\--

The numbers are familiar, even when the keys are smudged with blood and barely lit with the cracked screen and dying battery.

Regardless, the number slips through seamless. Will thumbs the speaker. Sets the phone on the windowsill and waits.

It’s early. Cold.

His breath steams, this time, when he smiles, listens to the rough tones of Hannibal’s sleepy tone.

“Good morning,” he whispers, presses his forehead to the window, hums. “I need you.”


End file.
